I know that all my blog entries contain typing errors, but please be more forgiving with this one. I haven't had enough coffee to fully recognise where I am at the moment.
For example, reading this: http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/jul/17/tories-challenge-european-court-human-rights-british-bill-rights one could assume that I'm somewhere in North fucking Korea right now, or at least a country that wants to be North Korea when it grows up. Especially since this 'Emergency Surveillance Bill' was rushed through parliament earlier this week, without almost any warning at all (source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/16/emergency-surveillance-bill-clears-commons).
(I know I'm just using Guardian links here, not my usual style, but the Guardian seems like its the only paper actually reporting on this stuff, which is pretty horrifying all by itself.)
Parliament just slipped this bill right through the back door without anybody noticing and as we all know, we really shouldn't be letting parliament slip anything in the back door -- especially not with all the sex scandals they keep covering up!
Of course the current government wants the final say on everything and absolute control over what we say and do. They're Tories. They're not going to be happy until we're all working 16 hour shifts at the TerrorLoom in our local workhouse while they and their donors are the only ones with any money or power. That's pretty much their entire philosophy.
But what frightens and disgusts me is how fast these horrible ideas have taken root with ordinary, non-millionaire people. When I tell most people about this, they either don't care or they take the opposite viewpoint because they know it'll piss me off.
Maybe I just keep telling this stuff to shitty people, I don't know.
But on the whole, people seem to be pretty okay with their rights being taken away, so long as there might be a slight chance that some potential terrorists may be punished a bit more harshly at some point in the future.
You know what that sounds like, right? People willing to sacrifice their own livelihoods in order to deal a slight blow to some nebulous enemy? Where have I heard that before?
Politically, it's pretty transperant what the Tories are doing. UKIP stole most of the racists and crazies that form the backbone of Tory voters and now the Tories are trying to appear more harshly right-wing in order to win them back. In addition to all the control they wish they had over us all, the Tories are trying to lure their normal voters back under their banner. In a weird, terrifying way, I understand it.
The government and their friends in the media keep shrieking the word 'terrorist' and the dullards of this country gasp collectively and ask how many of their rights they need to sign away in order to make the terrorists stop.
Not that the terrorists have even started yet, by the way. I don't think there's been any serious terrorist threat to this country in a long time. I certainly can't find anything that indicates we need an emergency surveillance bill of any kind. Not that I was given much time to look, this bill was announced almost in secret and I only had enough time to write to my MP (first time I've ever done that) then watch as the bill got rushed through.
It also shouldn't be my job to research this stuff and feed it out. That should be what the government and the media are for. Instead of farting out made-up benefits statistics and irrelevant details about who is using halal meat, they should be actually telling us what the government are proposing and how this will affect our lives.
But actual journalism doesn't sell many papers these days.
Goddamn, I really hope my next blog entry can be something positive (it probably will, book launch soon, yay!). But it just kinda feels like I have to get angry about this stuff because nobody else seems willing to.